Cloud computing has taken over the business world! With almost maniacal focus, single proprietors and Board Directors of the world's largest conglomerates see this new model as a "must do". This rapid shift is, in fact, accelerating. As Jeff Bertolucci observes in "The Shift to Cloud Services Is Happening Faster Than Expected":

"According to the sixth annual Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey, which examines the big-picture trends shaping IT infrastructure delivery and strategy, the move to cloud services is accelerating. The Uptime Institute's February 2016 poll of more than 1,000 data center and IT professionals predicts that an even faster shift to the cloud will occur over the next four years, reports ZDNet."

Another maybe even more important trend, that is actually being driven by cloud computing, is the rapid expansion of cognitive computing. In this arena, IBM's Watson, famously known for defeating Jeopardy gameshow champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, has quickly established itself as a commercial cognitive computing powerhouse. Contemporary reports of the Jeopardy contest from the New York Times cited this victory as IBM's "...proof that the company has taken a big step toward a world in which intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them". Although we are not yet at the human replacement stage, the merger of cloud and cognitive computing is rocking the business status quo.

Coined as "Cognitive Business" this trend can deliver quantum level improvement to just about any industry vertical. Examples include:

Using highly automated and economic cloud infrastructure to deliver proactive and predictive monitoring and threat interception in cybersecurity;

Establishing connectivity across over 6.4 billion sensors so that analytics and cognitive computing programs can provide actionable insight from real-time and historic data; and

Hybrid Cloud data architectures that use cognitive computing capabilities to maintain content traceability and lifecycle management to enable the auditable management of licenses, terms of use, and changes to third-party data.

Cognitive systems understand by interaction, reason by generating recommendations and hypotheses, and learn from human experts and data. Since they never stop learning they also never stop providing business value. With this blending of cloud infrastructure and cognitive applications, the impossible can suddenly become easy! If your business wants to take advantage of this important transition, the time to take action is now. Your initial steps should include:

Develop a cognitive strategy by deciding which of your products, services, processes and operations should be infused with cognition. Your strategy should include identifying your organizations data needs and picking the experts to train the cognitive system.

Collect and curate the data that is most useful to driving your business model. This step will help in creating an organizational foundation of data and analytics.

Use cloud services that are designed specifically for your industry vertical. Such services will incorporate the application programming interface (API) building blocks necessary to power your future cognitive products and services.

Acquire hybrid cloud service broker expertise and develop a hybrid infrastructure transition plan that combines your current IT systems with private and/or public clouds. This combination will serve as a backbone of your cognitive business.

Establish and build-in a data-centric security model from the start. This focus will give you the ability to secure every transaction, piece of data and interaction as cognitive systems make their way into the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Secure systems ensure trust in the entire system and ultimately, the organization's reputation.

Applications that understand natural language and generate personalized insights that learn with every user interaction

Consulting

Economic and secure collection, transport, processing and storage of massive amounts of structured and unstructured data

Ability to pull non-obvious insights out of massive amounts of multi-structured data through the discovery of patterns and relationships. This enables the economic use of dark data, described as "information assets that organizations collect, process and store in the course of their regular business activity, but generally fail to use for other purposes."

Distribution / Publishing / Content Management

Hybrid Cloud data architectures that ensures that, when multiple data zones are in use, compute power is moved to the data, rather than compute workloads being moved in a way that could violate institutional policies, regulatory guidelines or governmental laws around data location.

Data Fabric technology that maintains the traceability and lifecycle of content enabling the auditable management of licenses, terms of use, and changes to third-party data.

Education / Research

Global SaaS/PaaS business models and platforms

Creation of Analytic Fabrics that combine and orchestrate different analytics engines that deliver an ability to create composite or cognitive insights across first-part and third-party data. This can also be used to combine natural language queries with structured data analytics.

Healthcare / Public Safety

Global SaaS/PaaS business models and platform

Cognitive Graphs that can represent entities, relationships, and attributes in a probabilistic way, not just a deterministic way, so that users can do inferencing and generate hypothesis. This also delivers an ability to normalize many different data types as well as learn from data over time. With this capability, when something changes somewhere in the graph that may affect something elsewhere in the graph, every specific change is recognized at every point it touches.

(This content is being syndicated through multiple channels. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of GovCloud Network, GovCloud Network Partners or any other corporation or organization.)

Kevin Jackson, founder of the GovCloud Network, is an independent technology and business consultant specializing in mission critical solutions. He has served in various senior management positions including VP & GM Cloud Services NJVC, Worldwide Sales Executive for IBM and VP Program Management Office at JP Morgan Chase. His formal education includes MSEE (Computer Engineering), MA National Security & Strategic Studies and a BS Aerospace Engineering. Jackson graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1979 and retired from the US Navy earning specialties in Space Systems Engineering, Airborne Logistics and Airborne Command and Control. He also served with the National Reconnaissance Office, Operational Support Office, providing tactical support to Navy and Marine Corps forces worldwide. Kevin is the founder and author of “Cloud Musings”, a widely followed blog that focuses on the use of cloud computing by the Federal government. He is also the editor and founder of “Government Cloud Computing” electronic magazine, published at Ulitzer.com.
To set up an appointment CLICK HERE

The Cloud Computing Interoperability Magazine focuses ON APIs, standards and related Interoperability efforts.
The magazine is brought you to by the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, a group of industry stakeholders that are active in cloud computing. The group's goal is to define an organization that would enable interoperable enterprise-class cloud computing platforms through application integration and stakeholder cooperation.
Please learn more about us at www.cloudforum.org

Cloud Expo

Cloud Computing & All That
It Touches In One Location Cloud Computing - Big Data - Internet of Things
SDDC - WebRTC - DevOps
Cloud computing is become a norm within enterprise IT.

The competition among public cloud providers is red hot, private cloud continues to grab increasing shares of IT budgets, and hybrid cloud strategies are beginning to conquer the enterprise IT world.

Big Data is driving dramatic leaps in resource requirements and capabilities, and now the Internet of Things promises an exponential leap in the size of the Internet and Worldwide Web.

The world of SDX now encompasses Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) as the technology world prepares for the Zettabyte Age.

Add the key topics of WebRTC and DevOps into the mix, and you have three days of pure cloud computing that you simply cannot miss.

Delegates will leave Cloud Expo with dramatically increased understanding the entire scope of the entire cloud computing spectrum from storage to security.

Cloud Expo - the world's most established event - offers a vast selection of 130+ technical and strategic Industry Keynotes, General Sessions, Breakout Sessions, and signature Power Panels. The exhibition floor features 100+ exhibitors offering specific solutions and comprehensive strategies. The floor also features two Demo Theaters that give delegates the opportunity to get even closer to the technology they want to see and the people who offer it.

Attend Cloud Expo. Craft your own custom experience. Learn the latest from the world's best technologists. Find the vendors you want and put them to the test.